This transcript was generated from an audio file by AI, and may contain inaccuracies.
Transcript
This is my diaper bag.
Timbuktu bag.
When you start dropping brand names of diaper bags, you have some serious.
Hello, and welcome to episode 61 of the erasable Podcast. Tonight, we're coming to you from the bindery in South Baltimore. I am Johnny Gamber, and I am joined by the one and only Andy Welfle, broadcasting from San Francisco. Tim is unable to join us tonight, but we've got a very special guest who is sitting across a table from me in Baltimore, Chris Roth from Wright Notepads and Company. And I have to tell you, I'm looking right into Chris's dreamy hazel eyes right now in the very building in which the latest quarterly edition was created. How are you guys tonight?
I have to say, I'm jealous. I could not see Chris.
I'll send you a picture.
Hey, now.
Actually, I don't have my glasses on, so they're kind of blurry. How are you guys tonight?
Living the dream.
Yeah, I feel like I made everybody jealous last week by recording from New York with CW pencil. So Johnny just had to have i1 upped you.
That makes me feel good.
So next time we'll have Tim record live from Ridiculous.
We should call tonight the cliche edition or, like, start counting cliches, starting with when it rains, it pours. All three of the big seasonal drops were made this week from first Blackwing volumes, at least in my mailbox, Blackwing volumes, then field notes, and now today, Bright Notepads and company. So Chris is replacing Tim and not acting as a guest. So Chris is going to be with us for Tools of the Trade and the whole bang. So we don't take three hours. We'll jump right into Tools and trick. You want to go first, Mr. Chris?
I'll go first. You know, so I guess basically I'll just run down all the fun stuff that's been going on in my life that basically what little time there is outside of Notebooks did get a chance to break from the action, and I guess it was last week, two weeks ago, I don't know. Time Flies had a chance to go down to D.C. and catch Norm MacDonald on his small book tour. Dude is just comedic genius. And his book is so good. It's. It's his.
I.
You know, it's. It's really hard to describe it. You know, it's certainly not autobiographical in the sense of an autobiography. He's just. It's. It's Norm MacDonald's classic humor. It's definitely something that you should read and then listen to the Audiobook because he narrates it and you know, his delivery is incredible. As far as like TV shows and stuff like that, I don't have cable and I'm happy about that. So I don't actually watch tv especially you know, this being that four year cycle where every other commercial is politicians tends to be kind of miserable movies. I've been catching up watching Lethal Weapon marathons because they were, you know, just got off of Netflix and now on Amazon Prime. So you know, I just keep, keep the dream alive there. And as far as you know, writing instruments and paper of course I'm using one of my notepads, the graph version. And as far as the instrument, I have an assortment of instruments in front of me here. A nice pentel sign pen. I've got the, the Joe DiMaggio Blackwing. I've got my, my wooden bullet pencil and my new right notepads. Royal blue. So that's what's fun in my world.
Yeah. How about you Andy?
Well, I am as far as what I'm reading, it's probably the same as last week so I'm not going to go into that but I spent the weekend at the apartment by myself. Katie was in Indiana and I just watched a lot of like weird hour long bad documentaries on Netflix. Apparently there's a whole bunch of them. There's one about like steampunk culture which is interesting. What, do you know what steampunk is?
Yeah, that's weird that there's a documentary about it.
Yeah, there's a documentary about it on Netflix.
I'd watch that.
I think I fell asleep to that the other night.
It was actually super interesting. I love like steampunk literature and the sort of the idea it. But definitely not to the extent that people who dress up like steampunk dress in steampunk. You know, genres are. There's another really good one about uncontacted tribes in South America and they actually caught on video the first contact they had with them. That was really interesting. So it's bad but good I should say bad in that it's just like not super well known and it seems like it's probably like like third, like third tier but it's still a very super interesting one. So that's about it from my end. And I am writing with my new Blackwing 344 which we'll talk about in my write notepads, reporters notebook which is something that I love and use every day. Thank you. Thank you, Chris.
Thanks man.
Yeah. So how about you Johnny?
So I Just finished this book called Hemingway in Love. It was written by Hotchner, the guy that wrote Papa Hemingway and his.
Is there a major motion picture based on that?
Oh, man, there's like 50 years of this guy cashing in on the fact that he knew Hemingway for a while. So the book is supposed to be that before Hemingway went nuts and killed himself, he entrusted Hotchner with the true love story of his first two wives. And at 95, with no notebooks, he wrote it down. Here it is badly. So, I mean, if you're a Hemingway fan, you'll get it and read it. But like, also if you're a Hemingway fan, you know that Hotchner is, you know, Hotchner, so. Yeah. But on a more positive note, I finally got into Penny Dreadful, that Showtime series, because it's all on Netflix now, which is very good for Halloween.
Yeah.
And delightfully gory. And, you know, Victor Frankenstein being just like an everyday guy as a young man. Pretty interesting.
It's constein.
Having three kids, I keep watching Tim Burton's Halloween movies over and over. Or as Henry calls it, Frankenweenie.
What does Henry call it?
Frankenweenie. I feel like nobody ever knew that Frankenweenie came out. Frankenweenie was really awesome. And I'm writing with the new Write notepads book which I got in the mail today, and a new Write notepads pencil which I just stole from Chris.
Before we record it, I have a couple to spare.
So do you guys want to jump into fresh points real quick before we get into fall edition craziness? Wanna go first, Mr. Chris?
I'll pass to Andy. Let Andy start it off.
Sure. Well, one thing that we should have mentioned last week, but I completely forgot because I'm a terrible salesperson, is we have stickers. We have little 2 inch stickers, vinyl stickers from sticker mule, of our new logo. And by new logo, I mean like it's about a year old now. Yeah, they are gorgeous.
Yeah, they look awesome.
They look really good on a laptop. They don't take up a whole lot of room. You can stick them to the back of your brand new iPhone 7 if you wanted to.
They look really awesome.
But put on the screen of your iPhone 7.
But I don't know if I'm going to put anything on this puppy just yet.
Which color did you get, Chris?
I got the black. The shiny black. I can't remember.
Oh, the jet black.
Yeah, the jet black.
Yeah. Be careful you don't micro abraise it.
Yeah, yeah, that's Why? I mean, I think they just released that Tech21 case.
Oh, yeah, yeah, those things are like, so. Yeah, don't put the sticker on your iPhone.
I'll put it on the case when I get it on Tuesday.
Yeah, yeah, they're pretty good. $2 each. Or you can get three of them for $5. They're available. Erasable us/shop. We had a bunch of pre orders from most of the people in the. Well, a lot of the people in the group and I sent those up. But support your local podcast and get stickers.
Oh, I should interrupt you. The hex stickers, if people are waiting for them. They didn't get sent yet because I had a series of sort of family crises. So I will send them this weekend so they'll go out this weekend.
It's clear that we have a very professional fulfillment operation here.
Yeah, I think you sent me the form like a week and a half ago and we dropped the ball. So, yeah, I'll kiss each envelope, send
everybody like a post it note with like your lips, like imprinted on it.
Put graphite on my mouth.
Anyway, anyway, I also wanted to mention they have a release date for the. For a book that a company called Nicoletti Publishing. And I don't really know anything about them except that they publish a lot of, like, topical books. It seems like they have a lot of big shiny hardcover, like, coffee table books and they have one called Stationary Fever. From paper clips to pencils and everything in between. And there's a chapter in there about this little pencil podcast that you may have heard of.
Yay.
Yay. They interviewed me and Chris and Johnny and it is coming out on November 8th in the US apparently it's already out in the UK. I'll try to have a link to both of them in show notes so you can pre order them and zero proceeds go to us. But that's fine. Anybody who deems it important to interview some pencil podcast people about pencils is probably good to support. I know that they also interviewed Caroline Weaver and I think that there's maybe something from Sean from Blackwing Pages contrapuntualism in there too.
Yeah, I think Gunter did something too. Yeah, I think he did something on the Granada.
Yeah, it looks like a really awesome book.
Yeah, it's like 40 bucks. Yeah, her coffee table looks like it's
pretty big and it's nice and shiny.
So there's a picture of you and I at CW Pencils holding up a picture of Tim, right?
I think so.
That's really awesome.
We sent that to them, but I have no idea if it found a place.
Everybody should buy the book just for that. And if you send it to us, we'll autograph it.
Maybe we'll be able to convince people that Tim is actually like an artificial intelligence program that we run on my iPhone.
Yeah, he's the Linux version of Siri. That's why he's so awesome.
No wonder he's not here today because he's glitching out and can't make it onto the shell. He's the Linux version.
The Linux shell this week has been a little crazy.
He's like, I don't think so, kid.
That's awesome.
So, yeah, that is. That's all I have. What about you, Johnny?
So I only wrote down one, and that's Inktober. So for folks that don't know, Inktober is a sort of like. Would you call it a challenge to do one black ink drawing every day in October and then, you know, put it on social media and stuff like that? So, you know, I don't draw on ink. I don't really draw. I can't draw very well. But yeah, Charlotte and I have been doing it. It's been super fun. If you take like a sign pen and, you know, a decent notebook and give yourself five minutes, it's surprising what you can come up with. I mean, if I redid it, it'd probably be much better, but the stuff can be said for the permanence.
Have you been using your. Your sign pen for this or are you going to do any in graphite? Graphite cover?
No. So a friend of mine has an Instagram account which you guys should check out, that's called Cruddy Graphite. And he posts a lot of pencil drawings. Especially he likes the Mitsubishi handwriting pencil a lot. So he's been doing Inktober in Sign pen and he posted one recently about missing his pencils. But I should have written down what he said. He had a lot of interesting points about committing when you're writing or drawing in ink, stuff like that. But it's still early in October, so if folks want to jump in, you can jump in.
I just participated and drew an elephant with my micron pen in my hand here.
So National Library Month is coming up next month, so I'm sure we'll talk about that before then. But get your little feet wet. Having to do something monthly.
A whistlewitter. Whistle wetter.
Oh. The only other fresh point I can think of is my continual plugging for Target Pencils. They have some decent Halloween pencils and really cool little Halloween erasers. So if you have kids who even like pencils a little bit. Bullseye's playground now, they don't call it the dollar bins anymore because they're not a dollar. But yeah, I mean, I don't get paid by Target. I swear.
I'm looking at this picture that Chris sent me of you and I see that you have a UV stick on your laptop.
What is that?
Toucan?
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I bought some pens from them once and they didn't work, so I emailed them because they said to email them and they sent me some stickers and temporary tattoos.
That's awesome.
I was like, are you serious? She's like, love the tattoos.
I was trying to figure out what that was and I was like, is that a UB sticker?
I mean, I'm going to publicly point out that I don't have a right notepad sticker on my computer because there are none.
Yeah, I would process play one proudly on mine.
I'm trying to talk Chris into getting a. Right. Nope. EDS tattoo.
Nah, no ink for me.
I don't know how the hell they do in other states, but in Maryland, if you bet any alcohol, they will not tattoo you.
Oh, really? Drive up to Pennsylvania.
I don't fill out paperwork anymore. At the tattoo parlor I go to, like. Nah, we know you, so take you with me. They won't make you sign anything saying you weren't drinking.
I hate to spoil the surprise for everyone, but Johnny does not look like he's under the age of 18.
At least you don't have to prove that you're not caffeinated in order to get a tattoo or otherwise Johnny would still be waiting.
Oh, gosh.
They make me hold something so my arms don't shake. It's a permanent thing. Grip this boy. I'm not kidding. So we have a lot of stuff to talk about. So I think the field notes were released first, so I put those first on the list. Technically, they sent out their email and announcement first.
Yeah.
So you want to go first, Chris?
I'll go first.
New Lunacy Edition.
Yeah, I mean, should we do a
quick, like, introduction to what? Lunacy Edition.
Talk about this one. So the Lunacy edition is usual three pack from field notes where they took some black covers that are embossed on the back with the moon and they have sort of an internal cover that's a full color picture of the moon in the front. So they cut out a full Moon, a half moon and a quarter moon and the front. So they're like die cut black covered notebooks with 60 pound paper with the reticle grid and it's like a light gray paper. So if you're a subscriber, you've got a fourth notebook which is a new moon. So it just doesn't have a cutout and that one doesn't have a belly band. It's just got like a back card. So it's really different. The other stuff they've done, they never done one that contains this much information and also one that was 13 bucks a package. So. Yeah. What do you think of those, Mr. Chris?
I can only go off of pictures that I've seen because yeah, Johnny failed in three categories tonight. He failed to bring beer, he failed to bring coffee, and he failed to bring the other two quarterly editions for me to see in person.
There's no beer in my dagger bag where the other things are.
Yeah. But going off the pictures, I mean, they look really cool. What was the paper that they used for the card?
I don't remember what paper it was. It's sort of like it has the tooth that the DDC notebooks have, but it's a lot thicker.
I think they use a neenah paper.
Yeah, they're looking now. They have all their specifications online. Yeah, it's the innards is Domtar EarthChoice gray, 60 pound paper with moondust gray and opus text white, 70 pound. Oh, that's the. That's the. Sorry, the. Like the moonstock. Yeah, like the inside cover. Yeah. And then they use. They use neenah paper as the black cover.
Epic black stipple.
Epic black stipple.
Yeah. And black staples this time again.
And now the moon. The moon. So you said that it's. There's the die cut window showing the different phases. How is it printed? Is it glossy? Is it.
It's pretty glossy. Well, the inside page is really thin. It's thinner than the paper or the
COVID So like glassine.
I have no idea what that means. Like
tracing paper style paper.
It's like twice as thick as a paper in the New Yorker.
Okay. All right.
That's a uncanny way to describe it. Then the insides were bent up of mine. Oddly, the covers weren't. I guess it was hard to bind these. What's your take on these?
I think they look cool. I mean I'm a sucker for black
notebooks, so I think they're fun.
Yeah, I like them a lot. I think I probably should see if Chris is done Talking before I go into it.
Oh, no, go right ahead, Andy.
I love the reticle graph that they use, which is the. Oh, I know. Unexposed. And Night sky also used it, but it's like a dot grid but with little plus signs instead. So there's just a little bit more semblance of like a full graph in there. So it has that which I love. I guess my only concern is what a few of the other field notes has in that. You know, it has this like die cut hole in the middle of the COVID And I feel like that could snag pretty easily. So I'll be interested to know like in a month from now how. How it still holds up. Like in somebody's pocket.
Yeah. I opened up the Full moon one first with the biggest die cut.
Yeah.
And I've been carrying it in my pocket for a couple of days to see if it would rip or fray. It's been okay so far.
It's good.
Yeah, it's. The paper is really stiff, but flexible. Yeah, it feels. It feels like it's pretty durable stock.
My. I think my. One of my top three favorite editions of Field notes is the Night sky editions. So this. This seems like a really good kind of like next evolution of that. You know, Night sky was more about like the constellations and they had that kind of holographic constellation, like set back covers. This. This seems like a really good sort of like enhanced version of that. So I'm. I'm all about that.
And did you guys watch the video where they did a fake moonscape cement? The whole time I'm thinking, you can't breathe in that cement. That's really bad for you.
They come in my name.
So unrelated to pencils, Fisher space pen is having their 50th anniversary. So for my birthday, I wanted this new space pen. It was a bullet pen that has the phases of the moon engraved through the lacquer and into the brass. So it matches these notebooks really well.
That's a really cool looking pen. Do you have it on you?
No, he didn't bring anything.
Oh.
I didn't even mean to bring that one though. So I didn't quite fail.
Surprised he remembered his glasses.
That sound like a saber on my face.
Is that it?
So I guess my only negative feedback is I really think that the name should have been Moonshot instead of Lunacy. But Lunacy's fine.
I would have like Moonstruck.
Moonstruck. Moonstruck.
They could have done a share somehow.
Yeah, yeah. Lunacy makes sense. Lunacy's fine.
Yeah. Yeah. I feel like that's a nod to Field sense.
So, Maya, I was supposed to be getting them today, and then I just checked yesterday, my, like, little. Little tracker, and it said that it was going to be until next Tuesday before it comes because it got held
up like in Utah, man. Mimer supposed to come tomorrow. They came two days ago.
Yeah. I feel like everything happening in Florida is just like affecting everything across. Everywhere.
Let's say that that FedEx smart post, but it is kind of.
Is that how.
Is that how they're set and then they hand it off to the USPS at some point?
Yeah.
I actually ordered a pair of American made New Balance shoes that were sent FedEx SmartPost and they went from Virginia to Tennessee to, like, one far point in Maryland to another far point in Maryland, and then finally arrived to me
out of season two days before it
was scheduled to deliver. So I guess it's kind of a crapshoot dealing with shipping service.
Yeah. I thought this paper would really suck for pencil because when they did the Cold Horizon that had the dyed papers, the pencil was hard to see. I feel like it's smeared.
That was a coated paper too, wasn't it?
I think so, yeah. This one's got a nice tooth to it.
Yeah.
I still hate the reticle, though, because I feel like they should space it the way they space the dot grid, but instead they space it the way they space the regular grid. So it just looks like something's wrong with the paper. Like, not a big fan of this format for paper. Charlotte was like, over the moon, no pun intended when they came. She's like, oh, I'd love to have a set of those damn kids. Christmas is coming up.
Yeah. So it's a little bit gray, isn't it, Johnny?
Yeah. It's nice that they put 60 pound in there again, though, because they did that for Shenandoah and Snowblind, and we sort of thought that was gonna be the norm and it hasn't been. Yeah, they did that for the last run of Pitch Black, too. Really made me think it was gonna be a permanent thing.
Yeah.
Yeah. The tooth is nice. Pencil shows up really nicely on there. And I did try a couple pens. The ink was pretty good. Yeah.
This should appeal to all those who thought that making a reporter's notepad was a little bit too, like, off format for them.
Yeah, it's one of those things. Everybody hates it or loves it, but they'll probably do something so normal next time. Everybody will get mad about that. This would be like, you know, a different logo color. Yeah, yeah. So you guys want to move on to the Blackwing volume 344. Do you want to describe this one, Andy?
Yeah.
So
in our last episode I sort of made an assertion. I was like, I'm pretty confident as to what this is going to be going to say right now that this is going to be the Frank Lloyd Wright edition. We're not sure what 344 means because we knew at that point that that was going to be the number volume and like. Fine, that's. That's fine. Frank Lloyd Wright was like sort of associated with blackbing culture. I know that Charles has a poster of like Frank Lloyd Wright's pencil tray. There's a big famous photograph that they turned into a poster. He has that at least he used to have in his office. But I am actually super pleased to say that I'm completely wrong. And I'm pleased because there is. It's a tribute to Dorothy Lang, who is a pretty, pretty famous like Bay Area photographer. She took a lot of pictures of like Dust bowl resettlements. She took pictures of when the Japanese Americans in the Bay Area were first forced to relocate to like an internment camp during World War II. Fantastic photographer. I'm super excited that there's a woman featured on the Blackwing volumes. Now. We broke the streak of dead white guys. Well, some alive white guys, I guess. Bob Dylan is technically still alive, quote unquote.
Edgar Allan Poe will forever live in Baltimore.
That's true.
So yeah, that's super exciting. So the pencil itself, I was trying to figure out what to make of it. It took me a while before I realized. And then also read that this is what a Blackwing pencil looks like under the red darkroom lights. So the barrel itself is sort of this like dark maroonish mahogany color. And then there is. The ferrule is red. And then the. The stamp on the side of the barrel is red. And we think it probably has a 602 core. I've been using it and it feels very 602. So aesthetically it's not my favorite. But I like what they did. Like, I like the execution of the theme. What do you guys think of how it looks?
You want me to start? I think it's terribly clever. Yeah, they really thought outside of the box as far as the design of it. I definitely am going to buy a set of them. I think they're awesome and like, like what you touched on, you know, featuring a woman in a limited Edition was a really, really cool move and you know, something that's probably been long overdue. Yeah, yeah. I mean, and Dorothy Lange in general
was just incredible in her work.
Oh, absolutely, absolutely.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, years. I mean, it's been years. But when, when the Tribune took over the Baltimore Sun Tribune, you know, they would. I guess, I guess at that time they acquired several newspapers and they were liquidating all of their, their stock images from their archives. And several of her original prints showed up on their ebay auctions. And I was going after one of her famous prints and it just sold for an astronomical sum of money. So yeah, I do not have of her original prints in my collection. But you know, I come from a photography background and a past life. I was a music photographer and you know, having spent time in a dark room, it was, you know, it was something that definitely appealed to me. So I will definitely be adding these to the arsenal.
Yeah, I really think it's cool. Palomino. I think they're changing up their like corporate branding, the actual Palomino branding itself. So this pencil and some of the 602s are the first to try out a new, a new font where it says Palomino. And then instead of the little running horse, the Palomino horse, there's like a little three like cedar trees on there, which is more closely related to Cal Cedar's logo. Cal Cedar being sort of a parent company that also makes wooden slats, they sell to other pencil companies. Palomino is like a, like a brand within there. And Blackwing is sort of like a brand of Palomino. It gets confusing to drill down, but yeah, I like it a lot. I miss that little horse, but I like the little three treats. I think it's a nice, it's a nice tribute to Kel Cedar itself. Johnny, what do you think about how this looks and performs?
I think it's the most autumnally colored pencil ever.
It is very autumnal.
When you sharpen it, there's a nice underlay of red ink which I don't know how the layering works, but it's very, very pretty. Oh yeah, I see that they redid the eraser now too. The erasers are dust free and they work a little better. Good. That's always been the weakness of the Blackwing, I think.
And this eraser is also supposed to be on the regular 602s anyway, right?
Yeah. Going forward they're going to put dust free erasers on all the black ones.
I think out of all of their Erasers. The last black one was still my favorite, even though it's pretty dusty. But this one is even. Just even better.
Yeah. And the. Where's I go with that? The new logo is tying in with their centennial, which comes out next year, which is really cool.
Oh yeah.
So we'll probably have Charles on who's the CEO sometime next year.
I want a Charles Berlzheimer themed blackwing.
That would be pretty cool. Have some dark green on there, screen print.
It'd probably be giant colors. Really?
His portrait on the feral.
Yeah, I'm trying to think of some. You know, whenever there's a new edition that comes out, we have some, some discourse in the group about, you know, the execution of it and the conception of it. I haven't really heard any like, legitimate criticism. It's something like it's a very like general photography theme though, tributing a specific photographer within it. I think that's completely fine. I mean, the John muir pencil, the 211, you know, is kind of the standard natural wood, like conservancy pencil, paying tribute to like a specific person within it. But yeah, I like this execution much better than I liked, like the 1138 for example. And even I wasn't a big fan of the 725 though. Like, I don't really care about guitars, so that's probably it.
Yeah, there was a lot of. Or not a lot of. There was a little bit of suggestion that they just tagged a woman on at the end when they were all gonna do photography. But talking to Charles, that was something that was planned the whole time.
Yeah.
So I wonder. We didn't talk about this in the podcast, but there was a lot of flap when some of us brought up that all the black wings were dedicated to white men.
Yeah.
And they'd already planned a woman, so that could be why they stayed out of it.
Yeah, there's. There's no way they could have like pivoted on this edition by the time we were talking about it last time, so.
Oh, sorry, what's that? We didn't talk about the subscriber extra.
Oh, yeah, yeah. So it's. I have not even begun to try to cut it out, but the subscriber extra features this papercraft, what is it called, a pinhole camera. And so you can cut it out and just make your own pinhole camera. Have you tried to do that to yourself, Johnny?
I have not, but they said that they put the PDF online so that folks can try it. So I'm going to try it With a crappy paper one before. I try the nice looking one that they printed.
Yeah. I have some extra cardstock here if you want. You want to use some cardstock? I have a couple pages.
I can put it out and try it. Yeah, yeah. So 35 millimeter film on hand.
That could be a little more challenging. We actually may have.
We gotta go down to Walgreens.
That's right, Walgreens.
So Chris and I discussed during the entire episode in Baltimore. E's, but folks might not understand.
Yeah.
Plus nobody.
It's not the greatest dialect this country is known for, that's for sure.
Well, if you want me to. I have already caught myself listening, Having listened to, like, old episodes where I live in Indiana. I've already caught myself ending my sentences with upward inflection like this. And I don't mean to. So I've so far managed to avoid the whole.
Yeah,
yeah. The few episodes I've listened to. I don't cover up my Baltimore accent as well as I think I do.
I can't even. I can't really reproduce, like, in my head. Baltimore is not in the South. And I guess.
Oh, yeah, we. We're not far from Federal Hill, which is the hill on which the federal troops trained cannons on Baltimore during the Civil War.
Okay. Yeah. Like we had.
That's why they're called Mobtown. We had a lot of riots. Proud history of riots. It goes back 150 years.
I was gonna say nicotine. Just a new thing as far as just like this year.
Yeah. Yay, Driver City.
Go, Baltimore.
Yay, go, Ravens.
So.
So, yeah, the concept is really cool. I love the tribute. Johnny, you mentioned. It does kind of tie in with Steinbeck a little bit.
Yeah. Yeah. By mentioning that particular photograph, I sort of tied it up with the depression area. So I brought Steinbeck right to mind for me from two. Was it two extras ago? Two volumes ago? 24.
Yeah.
Which I didn't appreciate at the time, but now I appreciate it a lot more.
Yeah. So, yeah, it's not my thing aesthetically, but I appreciate just the execution of it. I really love that they've anodized this ferrule or somehow colored it, because I see a world of possibilities of gorgeous other colored ferrules.
Yeah. If you take out the eraser, the inside is red too.
Oh, wow.
It's impressive.
So they must have standardized the whole thing.
Yeah. My wife was eyeing them up, so I think I have to get a second dozen. I think I'm probably gonna lose mine.
Well, so they initially sent Something to my. To my old address, even though online, I changed it to my new address. But Alexander, who's amazing, he's the brand manager at Palomino, he sent me another. Another set to my new address, which just made it. And so I'm actually getting. I think the other one is being forwarded here sometime this weekend. So I. I'm trying to decide if I should keep it and then send him 30 bucks or if I should, you know, send it back. And I think I'm gonna keep it because this is a really great addition
that happened to me with 211, and they went back, and I really regret that I didn't just lie and keep.
No, I have no idea what you're talking about.
Now. They're going for, like, 120 bucks. Yeah, I just keep them. They're nice. Yeah.
Cool. So anything else we should mention about the 344s? Oh, what is. What does the 344 stand for? That is.
It's the archive box where a lot of her photographs are kept at the Library of Congress.
Okay.
With a call number for the box in which a bunch of her more famous prints are stored. We could go down there from Baltimore. Yeah.
Do it.
Yeah. So for the right notepads, I think it would be fair if Chris gave us his opinion, but this would be a good chance for him to give us a little bit. Give us a little bit of the history, because this is, like, a really, really involved issue. It's not just a color like some of the older field arts were. It's just like, a really, really big deal.
Yeah. Chris, I want to hear everything from, like, how you thought of it to, like, how you executed it.
Oh, boy.
Where to begin? It actually, it was like a happy little accident as I'm staring at my Bob Ross mural. It's called the Royal Blue. So it features arguably the most famous rail line that was ever in the B and O Arsenal, the Royal Blue, which traveled from D.C. to Jersey City. What was really unique about this train is that it was just the epitome of first class luxurious travel. And, you know, basically it would make stops in, I want to say, Baltimore at the Mount Royal Station, which had been decommissioned in the late 50s. And then. And then it would stop in Philadelphia, and then it would travel up to Jersey City because they couldn't get the train into New York because of a rail line dispute. One rail company owned the tracks in New York, and the B and O did not have access to that. So what they would do is they would offload the passengers and the luggage in Jersey City and they would load them onto a luxurious boat bus that would then ferry them to Manhattan and it would take them to their hotels or homes and it would be door to door service with their luggage. I mean it just exuded, you know, just prestige and affluence. And the rail line itself, the royal blue, it was in Commission from 1890s all the way up into 1958. And some of the famous passengers, FDR, while he was president, was a frequent traveler heading back up to New York. And then Queen Elizabeth II took the train in 1957, which was a very historic occurrence where she Traveled from Washington D.C. to New York on the line. And how it all came about. We had been thinking about doing a train related book for quite some time. I'll be completely honest, I've loved trains my entire life. I am by no means the most educated on all the famous lines that had traveled. But you know, being from Baltimore and always having worked in the city, I mean it's really hard to miss the rotunda at, at the B and O Museum, which was the original roundhouse that they have since turned into a museum. And I want to say that it currently houses the world's largest collection of steam engines. So people do travel from around the world to really take a look at their collection and it's really funny. So we were introduced to the executive director of the B and O Museum and you know, he big fan of our notebooks and obviously we're a big fan of history and the rail line and anything to do with Baltimore. And he was super helpful in making sure that everything maintained continuity, everything was historically accurate. So we have inked a three year exclusive with the B and O. And this is the first of many train related notebooks that are to come in a variety of sizes and styles. And this is just one that you know, it fits with fall to us because you know, I mean, heck, even before we released this, you know, I would always, you know, train travel is synonymous with the, you know, foliage of fall and you know, traveling the rails across country. So you know, you get to see the country and you know, the, the beauty of nature via the rails in a totally different way than you would being stuck in this God awful traffic in this wonderful Baltimore corridor. So yeah, we're really, really, really proud of this release. You know, again, going back to keeping everything aesthetically accurate, we went with a really dull, muted metallic gold and of course the royal blue color of the train. And we wanted it to Feel like something that literally if you were riding this rail line in the 20s, you would reach in the back pocket and this is what you would find. So definitely styled it to have that nostalgia going on for it. We also did release for members a pencil that is a royal blue, stamped royal blue, of course, with the left handed imprint. To this day, I think, you know, even I don't know how many pencils we're gonna have to order. And Musgrave produces all of her pencils each and every time I get the email like clockwork, you realize the imprint is left handed.
I said yes, it's intentional.
So members will receive three pencils along with their notebooks. And Mr. Gamber already let the cat out of the bag. As far as the funchotchke that we included with this, which is a train patch, I think I touched on everything. I don't know, I probably did.
You mentioned the pencils round this time. I'm sorry, do you mention the pencil's round?
Oh, the pencil's round. Yeah, it's round with kind of like a matte gloss lacquer. It's not like super shiny. And we wound up going with some sort of a muted gold. We didn't want it to be like super, super vibrant because it kind of actually matches the ferrule incredibly well. So it's a gold ferrule and a white eraser.
Dust free.
Yeah, it's just beautiful. I can't wait to try it out. Can you tell us a little bit about the ruling?
Oh, yeah. So we wound up going with lined paper, back to back editions. And the reason for this is that we, you know, it's not always about what we want. It's what people want. And you know, it was sort of unanimous that a majority of the people that purchase our products and the memberships, they have a preference for lined paper. So we figured, why not?
Yeah.
Nick, can you talk about this? The color of the COVID Because it's kind of perfect because it's a royal blue. The royal blue lines color isn't really royal blue. It's a little darker.
Yeah.
Like just shy of navy. Yeah.
It was really, really tricky picking the correct blue. Literally it was us going to the museum and pulling up, oh my gosh, I can't even count how many photographs of like models of this thing because, you know, depending on the years and stuff, you know, obviously color photography from 1890 to 1958 wasn't exactly the most accurate as far as color calibration is concerned. So it was literally a hands on task of taking my Pantone Swatch book and finding the color that matches it best.
Yeah, so write notepads, pocket notebooks always come in a box, which is really cool. I appreciate that. So the box is gold with blue the way the notebooks are blue with gold. Correct. What's the story with this gold? That's kind of perfect.
Well, you know, again, going back to Courtney, the executive director of the B and O, he was incredibly helpful in making sure that we maintained continuity. As far as the logos that we used, the artwork that was used, it all fit a certain period. You know, initially when we were throwing around the ideas, you know, he called me out on, well, you can't use that B and O logo because that one's from the 50s, and this needs to be the one from the 20. So just remove that and enlarge that and you're good to go. So that's what we did. And, you know, his opinion was really. Was what mattered most in this, because he is the B and O Museum. And he's, you know, he was really incredibly pleased with the way these turned out. So the colors of the royal blue were this particular blue and gold, which wasn't like a bright, shiny, blast you in the face gold. It has that muted sort of feel going on for it. So that's why we decided to go with the boxes in gold and the notebooks in blue, and inside, you'll see that it continues. So as you open the box, you can see that there's a repeating pattern of one of the famous logos that they used for the royal blue line, that it says Philadelphia and Reading Railroad, Baltimore Ohio Railroad, Royal blue Central Railroad in New Jersey. So it basically just ties in all the lines that were connected in its journey from Washington D.C. to Jersey City.
That's awesome. I feel like there's a lot of pencil fans who cross over with train fans a lot. Cody Williams is a big example. He's a member of the group, and he's been on the show before. So, yeah, you know, you have your. Your baseball fans and you have your train fans and your pencil fans, and there's a huge crossover there, I think.
Yeah, my son likes all things trains and all things blue, so he, like, completely lost it. Yeah, like, those are the words I use when we were recording. Like, he, like, really lost it the first time. He's actually gotten excited ever stationed.
That's a good thing.
Aside from pencils that have trains on them, that Cody Brock back in Japan.
Yeah, these are some of the early review, like, I feel like Johnny is the one who kind of broke the news in the field nuts group and in the pencil group. Yeah. Some of the early reviews were like, you know, I love field notes, but lately, you know, write notepads has really been killing it.
Yeah.
So, yeah, I think that. I think these are amazing. Like such a good Baltimore tie in and just a really good, like aesthetic tie in.
Yeah. If anybody is, you know, thinking of a trip to the mid Atlantic, it's worth coming here just to go to the B and O museum. It's really that cool.
Yeah. What's fun about the museum is Johnny and I were talking prior to recording how actually it's a pretty hands on experience at the museum. Literally, you know, you can get inches away from these monstrous steam locomotives.
There are a few that let you get in.
Yeah, yeah. Some you can get in. And in fact, as part of the museum, they own the original two miles, the first two miles of railroad track ever laid in this country that crosses over the viaduct. That is the oldest viaduct for obviously for train travel. So you actually get to take a trip on this line that crosses possibly arguably the two most historic miles of rail in the country.
That sucks. Is they don't have good food, but they do have a really nice gift.
But Holland's Market is right up the street. Chucky's Chicken. It's the best.
The B and O railroad pencils are engraved with fire through the paint. They're like actually like pretty decent pencils. Oh, cool. They don't have the color change thing. They're just like regular colors, but a gold barrel and a matching eraser. I mean, I don't have a small collection of them, so. Andy, you don't have yours yet?
I do not.
So these notebooks have a smell.
They have a smell.
Yeah. They smell like ink and paper when you open them. It's really nice. It's gone away largely. Plus I'm having a cold.
It is serious heavy coverage of ink on both the box and the notebooks. And literally when I went down to press check them, I left the sheets because they were still wet in the back of my car. And as I opened the door the next morning to come into the office, it was so strong.
It's a good smell, though. I like the smell.
Yeah, it is. I mean, I've grown up around it, so it's just kind of the norm for me.
You guys have like the perfectly spaced lines in your books. Like if you always use lines, that would be fine.
Okay, duly noted.
Yeah, they're they're gorgeous. I can't wait to try them out.
Hopefully, fingers crossed, yours should arrive tomorrow or Monday.
I usually get my black wings late. They ship the east coast ones quick. Yeah. This time I was very happy. I got them on Instagram first and also these first, I think opened them, went on the balcony, took pictures and then came down here.
Yeah.
I should have intentionally held back Gamber's order so he wouldn't be the first to reveal. I was totally thinking about that. I'm like, I'm like this, this, this, this Homer can't get him first again and then spoil it for me. He literally just like picked the lock on the back door.
He leaves, the front door unlocks. So, yeah, these will be in stores pretty soon.
Yeah.
When's the announcement coming out? We're recording on a Friday, so it might be out before this is out.
Oh, tomorrow they'll be made available for people to purchase on the website.
By the time you hear this, you could buy them already.
Exactly.
Rightpads.com I will have links to all this stuff in the show notes.
So, Chris, do you have any. And if you do, maybe you don't want to say. Do you have any like little special different paper stocks or alternates that you are offering in here for people to discover?
Not yet. For the royal blue, because the edition size is going to be larger than any that we've done before. You know, in addition to the sales channels being our stores that we've dealt with and our own online store, you know, these will be stocked at the B and O Museum and, and you know, them being an affiliate of the Smithsonian, you know, we're working that channel as well. So. But as far as like a little. An Easter egg. There was no Easter egg in this one. But if we, you know, we can't do it every time because then it's expected. But you know, but there will definitely be far more of those to come in the future.
Are you still chock full of ideas for future quarterly editions?
Yeah, in fact, I mean, we are. Literally, the day these things got put into boxes, it was back to the drawing board to figure out the winter release.
Polar Express edition.
No, no, I told you, we're not going to do back to back trains. But yeah, I think this one will be fun. You know, we're cooking with ideas right now and people, I think people are going to enjoy it.
Yeah, cool.
Well, yeah, these are.
Yeah, we've got some other cool products coming out too in the very, very future. Oh, yeah, that's right. The pocket flipbooks, the little guys.
Yeah, can you talk about those for
us a little bit? I've seen pictures of it, but I don't actually think we've even talked about it on the show yet.
Yeah, they're actually.
It was sort of like we were playing around with some dead stock notebooks that we had bound that, you know, they didn't hack it in the quality control department. So. So literally one day I come in and my dad's like, hey, you know what? I. Sorry. Johnny just handed me a note here. He was like. He was like, hey, I want you to take a look at this. So I go over to the big, massive guillotine cutter and he's like. He took one of the notebooks and he. He hacked it in half. And I'm like, yeah, you might be onto something here. It was just a little wonky. It wasn't like a cool. It was like a little too wide. So I was like, let's do this. Let's make it two and a quarter by the three and three quarters. And, you know, we just. We wound up doing it to a couple of them and threw them in our pockets and checked out how they were. And, you know, what we wound up doing for these is they're all plain paper and they're all perforated. So the idea behind that is for people to tote this along, whether it be in their pocket, bag, car, console, wherever, and always have a means to jot a quick note, tear it out if they want, and pass it along. Sort of encouraging people to continue to take pencil to paper. Yeah. So we wound up doing a run of them and then just throwing them in orders and, you know, just to see what people thought of them. And then we just decided, hey, we're going to pick three colors and, you know, create a matching box. And we went with the bubblegum pink, the sky blue, and the black. Of course, all letterpressed boxes and covers and all sorts of fun.
I bought all of them. He did.
Johnny Gimmer did buy all three because
my kids like pink and blue. So the black ones are for daddy. Yeah, but the colors look even cooler than the white colors. I mean, the colored cover stock looks better than the white cover stock, which already looked cool, especially with the oyster.
Oh, yeah, we had. The oyster was shocking.
Oyster air.
That's right. That's right.
Tis the season.
We've got some oyster fest coming up here in Baltimore soon, so that's gonna be awesome.
Cool.
So this will be for sale at the B and R Railroad Museum. And possibly the Smithsonians.
Yeah. And I think, you know, because the B and O has several museums, so. Yeah, there's one in Ellicott City. And then also they are affiliated with the one in Harpers Ferry as well.
So all three of the editions that we talked about today are similar in that they are quarterly releases and they are about $100. They come out once every. Well, if it's quarterly, then three months. But I know Bright Notepads is more of a membership than it is a subscription. So there's other, there's other benefits to you, to you, a subscriber to a member as well as like just getting these releases, right, Chris?
That's correct. Yeah. So out of the three that we released, the only edition that we, we made pencils available for sale was the first one, and that was le. And you know, I'm not going to say that we won't do that in the future, but you know, it's just one of those things where we made it a little more exclusive. So members get the pencils. They also get a little tchotchke. This happened to be a patch. And then we initially started with membership cards and it was just like everybody does a membership card and like just combing the Internet looking for the most random American made things. Stumbled upon like old school hotel room, motel room key fobs. And I'm like, this is it. And they're made like, I think they're made somewhere in Indiana. And what I love most about the company that dealing with them, they were, they're super nice people is that, you know, when I finally. They gave me the parameters for, for laying it out and all that stuff. And he comes back to me, he says, well, I can't guarantee this because the font used and the sizing, it's completely at the discretion of the man operating the stamping press. I'm like, that is so badass. This guy's telling me if he has a bad day, he's going to put like Comic Sans on this goddamn thing. So it's like, it's.
But.
But it all turned out really well in the end.
Yeah, I keep mine in my diaper bag. One that I forgot. Yeah. When they, when they showed up, they showed up in a blank envelope with no return address. Yes, yes, yes, exactly.
I'm sure the post office loved that one. Oh, and for all the international members, don't think we forgot about you. They're included with this installment, so yeah, it's in there. And new members as well. It's in There also.
That's cool. Cool. Is there anything else you want to tell folks about this particularly awesome addition?
I think I touched on everything. By the time this airs, people will have them in their hands for people using them.
So you mentioned something about different size notebooks. Yes. Are you gonna let it go with that?
No. I mean, yeah, we've got something coming incredibly soon. Incredibly soon, meaning we're playing around with the first prototypes early next week and they'll be made available for sale soon thereafter. But it's going to be a pur journal notebook. That is five and a half, eight and a half.
A pur.
Yeah, I'm sorry, Sorry. I nerded out there for a moment. The perfect bound, so.
Oh, cool.
Awesome. So pur is the type of glue that we use. It's just. It's far more flexible and durable and
it's pure, real stuff here.
It's some real stuff. So that's coming.
That's coming for National Novel Writing Month? Oh, yeah, that would be perfect. There we go. Awesome.
Done. Done deal. I think that's it. That's all I've got on the desk right now. But, you know, knowing me and the right Notepads crew, there would be plenty more crazy ideas coming down the line.
Awesome. So we didn't talk for an hour and a half.
Yeah.
So, Chris, you want to tell folks where they could find you and your wonderful business online?
Yeah. So our website's rightpads.com and our social media handles, if you will, ISTPads. Otherwise you can find me at. Oh, yeah, Snapchat is rightpads too. I'll be honest. I know, like nothing at all about Snapchat. So I was just. I was like. I saw like this goofy ghost icon and I'm like, what the hell is that? But I'm starting to slowly get up to snuff with the new posh social media outlets. So, yeah, that's where you can find us. Or at, like a local Baltimore watering
hole drinking some blackwing Lager.
Blackwing Lager.
If I ever remember to bring it. So, Andy, where can folks find you online?
I am@woodclinched.com or on Twitter at a Wealthley, or if you just want to see pencil stuff, at Woodclinched. How about you, Johnny?
I am@pencil revolution.com on Instagram at my name and on Twitter Ensolution. This has been episode 61 of the erasable Podcast. Thank you for joining us well into our second half of 100, which is really awesome. You can check out our website at erasable us. This episode will be at erasable us 61. You can also find us on itunes if you want to recommend us on there and Overcast. That would be super helpful for us making our millions of dollars with more listeners.
Millions.
We have a Facebook page, sort of official broadcast arm, which is facebook.com erasablepodcast and we have the biggest group of pencilears on the Internet@facebook.com groups erasable, where we have like literally global 247 pencil talk. It's unbelievable. So thanks for listening and we'll catch you next time.
The intro music for the Erasable Podcast is graciously provided by this Mountain, a collaborative folk rock band from Johnson City, Tennessee. You can check out their music at www.thismountainband.com. I can taste the days below half
summer if I could just count the time this has happened before
All I said.